Archive for the ‘Medicine Hat Public Library’ Category

Life in a Chinese Village Comes to the Medicine Hat Public LibraryPresentation About Life in Rural China – Sunday, November 9, 2:00 p.m.

Chinese-Canadian author Chunqing Wang will be coming to the Medicine Hat Public Library on November 9, 2014, at 2:00 p.m., for a free presentation about life in a Chinese village. She will be showing photographs of her village, past and present, and will be discussing lifestyles of rural Chinese villagers today and through the past hundred years. From persistent poverty at the end of the last emperor’s reign, through the Japanese invasion, the Communist takeover, and several decades of Communist schemes like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Ms. Wang will discuss the effects of war, politics and market reforms on her family and her fellow villagers.

The presentation will be reveal parts of the real China that very few visitors have a chance to see. “Most tourists travel to the big cities or go on pre-packaged tours, but it’s difficult for an outsider to get a sense of rural China,” Ms. Wang says. “Because hundreds of millions of people live in villages–more than the total population of Canada and the United States combined–it’s worth knowing about if you’re interested in China at all.” As China becomes more and more urbanized, the experiences of Chinese peasant farmers are being forgotten: but her new memoir assists by committing to print her experiences and the experiences of villagers from Shanxi Province.

Ms. Wang will be reading portions of her book: You May as Well Sing, Brother: Seventy Years of Strange but True Stories of Adventure, Determination, Cruelty, Bravery, Survival and Especially Love from Inside a Chinese Village. In this memoir, compelling stories told in the first person show every human foible, folly, virtue and vice, as the villagers describe themselves, their neighbors, and those they have encountered along the way. (The memoir will be available for optional purchase for $15.00.)

Ms. Wang will be accompanied by her husband, Chris Denholm, who will provide his perspective as one of the few westerners to stay in a Chinese village for an extended visit.

Refreshments will be served.

Note: Because some of the topics, including war, persecution and suffering would be sensitive to young audiences, the presentation is intended for adults only.

The Medicine Hat Public Library and the Rhyme & Reason Writers’ Club are sponsoring a Local Writers Open Mic on Wednesday September 17 at 7:00 pm at the public library.

Calling all writers of short stories, novels, poetry or nonfiction! This is your chance to share a sample of your work in a supportive setting. Or, to just hang out and enjoy the readings of other local writers and readers for an evening of short readings in a coffeehouse setting. Each reading will be limited to six minutes and must be suitable for a public audience. Free light refreshments will be served.

The Event is FREE!

For more information or to add your name to the list of readers, call Linda at 403-977-1378.

The Lunchbox is the final film for Monday Night at the Movies until September. The screening takes place at 7.30 pm at the Monarch Theatre on May 19.

Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire) stars alongside the radiant Nimrat Kaur in Ritesh Batra’s delightful feature debut, in which a mistaken lunchbox delivery paves the way for an unlikely romance.

In Mumbai, home to over 18 million people, more than 5,000 famously efficient dabbawallas — lunchbox couriers — navigate chaotic streets to deliver lunches, lovingly prepared by housewives, to working men across the city. Ila (Kaur) is a housewife living in a middle- class neighbourhood with a husband who ignores her. Saajan (Khan) is a beaten down widower about to retire from his number-crunching job. After Ila realizes that Saajan is receiving the meals meant for her husband, the two begin sending each other letters through the lunchbox.

What starts as an innocent exchange about Ila’s cooking gently develops into something more. Whether it’s the cooking of a meal, the reading of a letter, or the riding of a crowded train, the film’s small moments culminate in big impact. In a word: enchanting. The film is in Hindi with English subtitles.

Monday Night at the Movies is a branch of the Friends of the Medicine Hat Public Library. For more information about Monday Night at the Movies, go to: www.mhfilm.ca or contact Jane at 403-529-2209.

A bittersweet comedy about a long married couple spending a weekend in Paris is the featured film for Monday Night at the Movies on March 17. The film screens at 7.30 pm at the Monarch Theatre.

Nick and Meg Burrows return to Paris, the city of their honeymoon, to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. Designed as a weekend to rediscover some romance in their sometimes bumpy marriage, long-established tensions break out in humorous and often painful ways. Along the way they bump into one of Nick’s old writing buddies, played by Jeff Goldblum, who has become a successful if somewhat vain New York author. Nick and Meg are played by veteran British actors, Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan.

The film is directed by Roger Mitchell, who directed the classic, Notting Hill, in 1999.

Monday Night at the Movies is an initiative of the Friends of the Medicine Hat Public Library. Proceeds from the films fund special projects for the library, such as the purchase of special equipment, licenses to show films at no charge, funding children’s and young adults’ projects, purchasing dvds for the library’s collection and more.

Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), a highly-regarded school teacher, has been forced to start over having overcome a tough divorce. Just as things are starting to go his way, his life is shattered. An lie spread by gossip throws the small community into a collective state of hysteria. Lucas is forced to fight a lonely fight for his life and dignity. At the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Mads Mikkelsen won the Best Actor Award for his role. It is rated 18A for disturbing content. The film is in Danish with English subtitles. The screening takes place at 7.30 pm at the Monarch Theatre on Monday January 20, 2014.

Monday Night at the Movies is an initiative of the Friends of the Medicine Hat Public Library. Proceeds from the films fund special projects for the library, such as the purchase of special equipment, funding children’s and young adults’ projects, purchasing dvds for the library’s collection and more.

Immersed in Waterton is a solo exhibition of works by photographer Tom Willock which features eighteen traditional silver gelatin black-and-white prints from two of his earlier series titled The Elements of Wilderness and Images of Waterton Glacier International Peace Park.

The photographs express the power of the vastness and beauty of this breathtaking mountain park which straddles the Canada-U.S. border in southern Alberta. The subjects depicted in the images range from frozen cascades to reed-filled ponds and from groupings of delicate maple leaves to forests dense with lodgepole pine.

Willock captures a sense of place with each photograph and explores our inherent connection to nature. The images are intimate and intuitive records that are infused with our sense of belonging.

“My sense of myself is inseparable from the land,” he writes in his biography at willockandsaxgallery.com. “My photographs have no purpose, no intention beyond the truthful expression of my own inner vision, reflections of human experience and the natural landscape. A quality of art is its simultaneous expression of particular and universal. For each of us, the expressive print will hold its own particular meaning and beauty.”

For more than forty years, Willock has been photographing the natural environment of southern Alberta in the large-format medium and developing film himself in a traditional darkroom to produce skilfully composed and technically impressive works. The director of the Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery from 1978 to 1998, he now lives in Banff, Alberta, where he runs the Willock and Sax Gallery with his wife, Susan Sax-Willock.

Which book should Medicine Hat residents read in October 2013? During the month of January, the One Book One Community committee is asking for suggestions of books for the eighth annual book discussion weekend which will take place in October 2013.

Every year Hatters come together to discuss a book and to enjoy activities based around the title. Like a citywide book club, One Book One Community offers readers opportunities to discuss the book, listen to guest speakers, and participate in activities that complement the book. Past books have included Obasan by Joy Kogawa, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark, The Englishman’s Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe, Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay, Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden and in October 2012, the chosen book was The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

Hatters are asked to make suggestions up to February 1, 2013. To be eligible, the book should be by a Canadian author, available in paperback and substantial enough to generate discussion. It can be fiction, non-fiction, biography, poetry or short stories. Suggestion forms will be available at Medicine Hat Public Library, the Vera Bracken Library at Medicine Hat College and at Coles Bookstore in the Medicine Hat Mall. Suggestions may also be submitted online at www.obocmh.ca The suggested titles are read and evaluated by volunteer readers and the committee. Once the book has been chosen, the title will be announced in the spring.

One Book One Community is cosponsored by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, City of Medicine Hat, Medicine Hat Public Library, Medicine Hat College and Coles Bookstore.

Toronto performance poet, Andrea Thompson, visits Medicine Hat Public Library to perform and read from her work. This takes place in the Currie Room on Tuesday, October 16 at 7.00 pm.

For the past twenty years, Andrea Thompson has performed her poetry across North America. As
one of the pioneers of Slam poetry, her writing has been included in magazines, literary journals and anthologies. She has been featured on film, radio and television. Her debut collection, Eating the Seed (2000) has been featured on reading lists at the University of Toronto and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her spoken word cd, One was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award in 2005. She was the Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in 2009.

She recently coedited an anthology, Other Tongues, Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, which includes
poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and explores the question of how mixed-race women in North America identify in the twenty-first century. The anthology serves as a place to learn about the social experiences, attitudes and feelings of others, and what racial identity has come to meant today.

Steven Galloway, author of the acclaimed novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo, will be the speaker at the eighth annual One Book One Community event. This free event takes place on Friday, October 12 at 7.00 pm in the Esplanade Studio Theatre.

The evening will be introduced by Mayor Norm Boucher who carried out two United Nations Missions in Croatia in 1995 and Kosovo in 2001. He is conversant in Croat and makes regular visits to Croatia.

The Community Orchestra, conducted by Christine Bootland of the Conservatory of Music and Dance, will play Albinoni’s Adagio. Coles the Book People will have books available for sale and signing. Refreshments will be serving following the reading.

Book discussions and activities will take place on Saturday, October 13 in the Crowfoot Room at Medicine Hat College from 9.30 am to 3.00 pm. All events are free. Participants may bring their own lunch or purchase lunch at the College Cafeteria.

For more information, please go to www.obocmh.ca, or contact obocmh@gmail.com. This event is sponsored by Medicine Hat College, The City of Medicine Hat, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Medicine Hat Public Library, L.E.A.R.N., and The Esplanade.

In recognition of Culture Days, Medicine Hat Public Library and the National Film Board of Canada present the film, The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche. Show time is 2:00 pm on Sunday, September 30 in the Library Theatre.

Mazo de la Roche was one of the most successful and prolific women writers of the 20th century. She was the author of the popular Jalna novels, about the Whiteoak family of Ontario. The books span 100 years, beginning with the arrival from India of Captain Philip Whiteoak and his bride Adeline to Canada, where they settled on the shores of Lake Ontario in the mid1850s. Several of the books were made into films and appeared on television.

Despite her great success, she was also a mystery throughout most of her life. In this film, both dramatic and documentary techniques are used to present a portrait of a compelling woman, uncovering the secrets behind her extraordinary literary success.

The film will be preceded by Bone Wind Fire, a 30 minute documentary narrated through the words and lives of Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr and Frieda Kahlo, three of the 20th century’s most remarkable artists.

This film is being presented by Medicine Hat Public Library and the National Film Board’s NFB Film Club as a joint presentation.